The first world's fair was held in Hyde Park in London in 1851. The fair displayed foods, fine art and new technology from
nations around the world. It was housed in the Crystal Palace, itself a technological wonder, which was constructed specifically
for the event. Subsequent fairs and the nations and cities which held them sought to compete for acknowledgement and prestige.
As a result, subsequent fairs were almost always increasingly larger with more elaborate architecture and exhibits. The 1889
World's Fair in Paris boasted of its Eiffel Tower, the 1893 Columbian Exposition touted its White City and giant Ferris wheel,
the Louisiana Exposition could claim it occupied a greater area than any other world's fair, and the Panama-Pacific International
Exposition was famous for its Tower of Jewels.

Although fairs provided visitors with recreation, their principle purpose was the dispersal of ideas, technology and culture.
Through their grounds, buildings and exhibits, fairs disseminated ideas about city planning, the relations of nations, the
advancement of science, and beliefs about ethnic groups, races, and the sexes. One of the major themes was undoubtedly consumerism.
The exhibits and elaborate displays of goods catered to and influenced middle-class tastes and consumption on an international
scale.

The plan, architecture and grounds of the fairs were created as examples of ideal cities with extravagant and sometimes exotic
architecture. They usually included three types of buildings: large pavilions, national and state buildings, and company exhibits.
The groups who constructed the buildings competed with each other to create the most impressive displays. Nations attempted
to create buildings which dwarfed their neighbors, states created monumental displays of their natural resources and industries,
and merchants built elaborate exhibit booths to display goods such as mechanical equipment, furniture and other products.

The 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition was the first world's fair to be held in California (San Francisco had been
the site of the smaller Midwinter Fair in 1894 and the Mechanics Fair in 1913). The Panama-Pacific International Exposition
(P.P.I.E.) celebrated the opening of the Panama Canal, and showed off the rebirth of its host city, San Francisco, after the
devastating 1906 earthquake and fires. The P.P.I.E. was the last great American Neo-Classical exposition in the nineteenth
century tradition. The plan and buildings were conceived of and designed by numerous architects such as Willis Polk, Bernard
Maybeck, Henry Bacon and Louis Mullgardt. The focal point was the 450 foot high Tower of Jewels designed by Carrere and Hastings
which featured 100,000 polished faceted glass jewels backed by tiny mirrors. San Francisco had competed with several other
cities, including San Diego, for the honor of hosting the fair. Although San Diego eventually acquiesced to San Francisco,
it had its own smaller Panama-California Exposition 1915. In 1916, many of the exhibits from the P.P.I.E. were moved to the
Panama-California Exposition. Small fairs such as this were often patterned on the larger world's fairs.

San Francisco continued the world's fair tradition in 1939 with the Golden Gate International Exposition (G.G.I.E.), built
on the man-made Treasure Island in the middle of the San Francisco Bay. Unlike the earlier world's fairs which usually employed
classical motifs, the G.G.I.E. buildings were an interesting mix of modernism and Aztec and Mayan motifs. The G.G.I.E. was
the last world's fair in California and one of the last in the United States, as other recreation options and new communication
mediums such as radio and eventually television eclipsed the fairs.

The Fairs and Expositions collection consists of drawings, photographs, postcards and publications that document a variety
of fairs and expositions nationwide. The collection is organized into five series: I. Panama-Pacific International Exposition,
II. Panama-California Exposition, III. Golden Gate International Exposition, IV. California Fairs and V. Non-California Fairs.
The bulk of the material is from the two California World's fairs: the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in 1915 and
the Golden Gate International Exposition in 1939. The Fairs and Expositions Collection is an artificial collection assembled
from smaller donations.